Chapter Eighteen Razor #3
“Not if I can’t stop Ghost pushing bad shit through my line.” I grimaced as he pulled the bandage snug. “Bastard’s selling cut product, skimming my money, and tanking my rep in one go.”
Why the fuck was I saying all this to a stranger? Painkillers. Had to be. I wouldn’t be this loose-tongued sober. Christ, I needed to tread careful. I doubted cash would keep this one quiet. Not when he was born into money.
Then he frowned. “Ghost?”
“Yeah.” I took the bandage from him, finished securing it myself. “Runs the rival crew your mate bought from on my patch. And the fact that’s a weak mix makes it harder for me to swallow. Which you now know why.”
Tristan leant back beside me, chewing the inside of his cheek, eyes darting as if chasing a thought. “Would he happen to have a warehouse in Bethnal Green?”
I looked at him sharply. “I told you too much when I was out of it.”
“No… you didn’t.”
“Then how the fuck…?”
He shut his eyes, muttered something under his breath, and shook his head. “Shit. Look, I really shouldn’t tell you this…”
I arched a brow. “If this is more half-arsed intel your pint-sized ex was spouting, save it. I’ve heard it. Got me nothing and nowhere.”
Tristan chewed on his lip. “You haven’t heard this.”
The way he widened those pretty eyes had me sitting up. “Okay, you got my attention.”
Then he closed his eyes, as if it pained him to say what he did. “What I’m about to say doesn’t leave this room. Not a word. What you do with it, is up to you. But you cannot bring my name into it. Promise me.” He opened his eyes, stared at me hard. “You keep this, I’ll keep your secret.”
“Alright, Tricky. What the fuck do you know that you can’t possibly?”
“The CPS are planning coordinated arrests on Ghost’s operation. Six targets. Surveillance, test buys, the works. They’ve had an informant inside the crew for months.”
The words dropped like fucking bricks. My pulse kicked. “How the fuck do you know that?”
“My father. Works for the CPS and my brother for the home office. I was there when they were discussing it.”
“Fuck.” I shook my head, a wry smile forming. “I really did land in the right fucking house.”
“Looks like.”
I scrubbed a hand down my face to get my thoughts in check. To get my brain moving away from Levi. From the pretty man I had in bed who’d opened that wound and kissed it better. Who was now giving me intel that might save my fucking life.
“When’s it happening? Who’s the rat?”
“I don’t know the informant. The arrests are planned for end of the week. They’re moving before the next shipment lands.”
I swore under my breath, curling my hands into fists. The line Cormac had me running, the stolen stash, the missing runner, Darren, all of it. It wasn’t just Ghost breathing down my neck anymore. It was the fucking filth.
“You realise what you’re saying?”
Tristan nodded. “I realise it’s information I shouldn’t have and definitely shouldn’t be giving to you.”
“So why are you?”
“Because you’ll die if you walk into that.”
I laughed, short and bitter. “Yeah, well, maybe that’s the easiest way out.”
“Don’t say that.” The sudden heat in his voice drove straight through me. “You don’t get to say that.”
He was shaking. Enough for me to notice and enough for me to care that he was.
“Why’d you tell me?” I narrowed my eyes. “You don’t even know me.”
“I know enough.”
The air between us thickened. His hand was still near my side, but I could feel him brushing his fingertips along the edge of my new bandage. I could feel his pulse through it, too.
I swallowed. “If this is true, and Ghost goes down, and they link me to any of it…”
“You’ll go down too,” he finished for me.
“Fuck.” I leant forward, elbows on my knees, head in my hands. “I’m fucked.”
Tristan hesitated, then, “Not if you play it right.”
I lifted my head. “What d’you mean?”
He looked at me as if he’d already thought it through and hated that he had. “If you know when they’re hitting, you could use it. Let Ghost’s lot take the fall while you… clean your side of the line.”
“Clean my side?”
“Ensure there’s no evidence tracing anything to you. Including those who work under you. Without evidence, the CPS can only prosecute what they have. And if that’s this rival lot, then that’s what it’ll be.”
“You’re saying I should set them up?”
“I’m saying you have the chance to not have been there. Ever.” He shrugged. “What you do with that is on you.”
I stared at him, chest tight, the war inside me kicking off again. Loyalty. Survival. Guilt. Need. All of it twisting until I couldn’t tell which was which anymore.
He met my gaze, steady. “You don’t owe them your life, Richie.”
That name. Said like that. Soft. Real.
It almost broke me.
Because it’s exactly how Levi used to say it.
I laughed, quiet and cracked. “You really think there’s a way out for people like me?”
“There’s always a way out. It’s whether you want to take it.”
“There’s no choice in my game, believe me.”
“There has to be.”
I shook my head, throat thick, then tilted my chin at him. “Why you doing this? Other than… whatever this is.” I waved a hand between us. “Beds. Alleyways. What is it? You think I’m a good fuck?”
Tristan bit his lip. “Evidently. But, no…it’s not just that.”
“Then why?” My voice came out harsher than I meant. “Why you wanna save my poisoned heart? No one else would. You read a few case studies and think I deserve to be saved?”
“Everyone deserves redemption.”
“That’s just in stories.”
“No. Not a story. I’ve seen it.”
I cocked my head. “Seen what?”
“How the world screws people like you and the unfairness of it.”
I waited.
He took a breath. “My father took me to court once.” He got comfy, as if ready to tell me a bedtime story.
One I might not like. “Said I should see justice in action. There was a boy. Seventeen, maybe eighteen. Up for robbery. He’d stolen phones.
My father tore him apart on the stand. Made him small, humiliated him.
The boy cried when the sentence came down.
Four years. He turned to look for someone, but there was no one. ”
I went to speak but he didn’t let me.
“Everyone called it a good day in court. My father said the system worked. I just remember thinking it didn’t feel like winning.
Not for anyone. That boy…he stole those phones because he was hungry.
Because life gave him no other option. But no one asked why.
No one asked how to stop it happening again.
They just stamped thief on him and threw him away.
” I drew a breath, the memory still sharp after all these years.
“It wasn’t the first time I saw the cracks in my father’s system, but it was the one that stuck.
The one that made me want to fight from the other side.
To see if the law could mean something.. . more than punishment.”
I drifted my eyes shut, hating I would ruin his rose-tinted world view. “Sometimes, it is our fault. And we know it. And we deserve what’s coming.”
He wriggled up, planting his hands either side of my face. “There are ways out. But no one tells you what they are. Because if they did, people like my father wouldn’t get rich.”
I gave a short, bitter laugh. “Money makes the world go round.”
He didn’t argue. Didn’t deny it. And he stayed there, close enough I could feel the warmth of him, the ripple stirring between us that I didn’t want. Couldn’t afford to have no matter how much gear I pushed.
And I realised something ugly and sharp:
He believed there was a way out. And I…
I wasn’t sure I wanted one.
Because men like me don’t get exits. We get graves. Or we get gone.
And lying there, bruised and stupid and ridiculously falling under the spell of this man who should’ve run from me the second he’d learnt what I was…
I couldn’t tell which fate I was walking toward.